Jan. 20, 2014
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Angela Merkel and President Obama / Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

President Obama must be concerned about relations with Germany amid reports of past U.S. surveillance on Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He went on German television to explain his new National Security Agency surveillance policies, the only interview Obama has given since his big NSA speech Friday.

In the session with ZDF television, which aired in Germany on Saturday, Obama said he would not let U.S. surveillance operations damage the trust among the United States, the German people, and Merkel.

"As long as I am president of the United States, the German chancellor need not worry about that," Obama said, according to a simultaneous German translation as he spoke.

"He (Obama) said that in foreign policy issues even close partners do not share the same views but that is no reason to spy on private communications.

"The interview was broadcast a day after Obama ordered new limits on the way U.S. intelligence accesses phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans and moved toward eventually stripping the massive data collection from the government's hands.

"Obama also promised to curb spying on allied leaders and to extend some privacy protections to foreign citizens -- demands that have special resonance in Germany because of its bitter memories of massive domestic surveillance by the Nazis and East German communists.

"German interviewer Claus Kleber told the president that initial reaction in Germany toward his speech had been 'skeptical, careful, many even disappointed" including those who are "normally pro-American.'"